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Boston Bombings: Truth, Justice and the Wild West of Social Media

It has been three days since the devastating bombings at the Boston marathon. No suspects have been named or are in custody. The web has begun to consume itself, gnawing on its own tail in search of comfort and answers. Until authorities find the bastards who did this, it should be a harmless exercise. But it’s not.

As I write this, Reddit users are frantically trying to stamp out a fire they started. What seemed like a good idea at the time — crowdsourcing an investigation of video and photo forensic evidence — has spun out of control.

A recent post on the site gives you an idea of where things are:

“the two Males that the media have claimed the FBI are looking for are local guys and appear to be innocent. PLEASE DO NOT POST ANY MORE ON THEM, ESPECIALLY LINKS TO NEWS SITES THAT IDENTIFIES THEM.

Since shortly after the bombings occurred at the finish line of the Boston marathon Monday, Redditors have used the subreddit “FindBostonBombers” to examine countless images for clues. As a public event, there’s probably a far greater supply of amateur photos, videos, Instagrams and even Vines that can tell authorities something about the tragic event. In fact, that was one of my first questions that day. I worried about how people could get their media to the FBI. YouTube quickly set up a space for people to upload videos. This was a good and very smart move.

On Reddit, however, you can see the problem almost immediately. From another post in the subreddit:

What’s wrong with that post? The use of the word “suspect.” For some Redditors, everyone in these photos is a potential suspect, and they’re quickly targeting people and then launching social media investigations.

Don’t get me wrong, the subreddit is fascinating: images and ideas about what happened and who might have done what, but it’s all conjecture.

If you were at the Boston marathon wearing a cap or a hoodie, a backpack (a lot of people wear them; I do every day), or look in any way suspicious, these Redditors were ready to name you a suspect.

The Flip-Side

The beauty of Reddit though is its facility for self-correction. Within hours of the launch of FindTheBombers, Redditors were calling on their compatriots (or hornets' nest of amateur detectives) to chill out:

This shit needs to slow down and accusations should be based in unimpeachable piles of evidence. From my perspective we currently know very, very little.

…

In order to point out a viable suspect we need evidence connecting a person or group to both locations, and in possession of a suspicious backpack. We're missing what we need to do this, all we can do at this point is wait for more info, or wait for the FBI to work it out. I know, you want to figure it out before they do, but we're facing a serious drought of evidence here.

And to a certain extent, Redditors have supported this idea.

Here’s what interests me about those comments, though: the Redditor said the goal was to identify the perpetrator “before they do.” "They" being law enforcement. There’s a bit of gamesmanship about all this, which leads to my second point.

All the World’s a Game

Reddit went into overdrive trying to catch these monsters before the FBI. Meanwhile, the media was playing a different game of "First."

As I mentioned earlier, there are, at the time of this writing, still no official suspects nor is anyone in custody. But for a few hours Wednesday, social media, primarily Twitter, was bursting with conflicting information about whether the FBI had anyone in custody.

CNN kicked it off by inaccurately reporting the FBI had collared a suspect.

Social media did the rest. No one wants to be the second source to share this information, so thousands on social media, mostly Twitter, began sharing the news. It took almost an hour and a half for CNN to reverse its earlier report. The FBI even put out a statement begging the media to "exercise caution."

Up until that moment, Twitter was a sea of confusion. Tweets stating suspects were in custody were followed by ones stating that information was untrue, only to be followed by others insisting it was.

According to CNN an arrest has been made in the Boston Bombings. Fox in Boston says suspect was caught on store surveillance video.

Almost the same thing had happened right after the bombings, when there were reports that authorities had a wounded Saudi national in custody. While police did question the man, he was never a suspect. Nevertheless #Saudi instantly became a top trend on Twitter.

Right, Not First

With emotions still high, and in this near-complete vacuum of information, I understand how misinformation rushes in to fill the void. But we have to realize how damaging it can be. People lost their lives in this tragedy — more than 150 were wounded — but others can easily be ruined if we aren't careful. If we aren’t sure.

Social media is a fantastic platform for instant news and information-sharing, but that news is often as not almost instantly buried in a cascade of distortions and sometimes outright lies.

All this said, I’m not advocating Reddit stop searching, but let’s not make it about beating the FBI. If Redditors do find something, share it directly with the FBI, not the collective, or at least do not share a single name, Twitter account, MySpace or Facebook page.

Obviously, a truth filter on Twitter is a fanciful panacea for all the misinformation, but in reality, I just want everyone to apply a little restraint.

Mashable
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